Posted by: Rod Kurtz on December 12, 2006

When an industry is constantly evolving, successful entrepreneurs roll with the trends. Just ask Tony Zoccoli, founder of Nine O’Clock New Media, a Web-development and creative-services firm based in Fremont, Calif. When he founded the company in 1995, it was called ProGraphix, had a single employee and focused exclusively on design for print products.

When Zoccoli started his company, offering Web services wasn’t even a consideration. "There was really no push for Web work," he says. "The Internet was too new." But as a growing number of his customers started requesting Web sites, Zoccoli reinvented his business to grow with the burgeoning industry. And he didn’t bother with a business plan.

Reader Comments

Randy Bancino

December 14, 2006 9:35 AM

If you think of a business plan simply as a document, it probably can’t hold you back, but it won’t likely have a big impact on your success. A good business plan is a mindset more that a document. An effective business plan could be thought of as the conscious choices the leaders of an organization make about how they will meet the demand and opportunities of the business environment. It allows a business owner to stay focused his value-add in the marketplace, and addresses the interface between the organization and its environment. A good business plan lays the foundation for tomorrow’s success while helping a business stay focused on competing today. My experience has been that most organizations that lack a well-defined, and well communicated, strategy lose their focus and eventually fail. However, a periodic re-assessment of the business plan will allow a business owner to make sure he/she is taking advantage of today’s opportunities as well as exploring new and future opportunities.

Randy Bancino
Managing Partner
Profitable Growth Partners, LLC.

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